Expand horizons on immigration

Nova Scotia needs a creative policy approach to immigration that goes beyond mimicking the economic-focused models of the federal government and other provinces.

To date, the province has largely fallen into step with other governments by banking on the purported benefits of economic migrants and using economic calculations to construct its immigration policies. This approach is narrow, instrumental, and epitomizes short-term thinking. With such policy, immigrants are expected to do all the giving, while the province does most of the taking.

In the short term, this economic immigration model has increased the number of immigrants coming, and staying in Nova Scotia. Over half of new immigrants left the province a couple of decades ago and now almost 70 per cent remain. This economic approach also expanded temporary migration, attracting temporary foreign workers and international students, filling acute labour needs and bolstering financially strapped universities, respectively.

Economically-driven immigration policies, however, are counterproductive for Nova Scotia in the long-term. They put the onus on immigrants to provide economic and demographic fixes to the province’s woes and to generate diversity. This is often done with few social supports. Many immigrants are underemployed working in job sectors beneath their level of education and training. Additionally, although the numbers of immigrants to the province have increased, the share of immigrants coming to Nova Scotia has not, and retention rates remain among the worst in the country.

These models are also associated with moving immigration management to third-party consultants and corporations in place of government. In the past, this contributed to disgruntled provincial nominees and legal suits against the province. Worse, relying on third-party consultants and the private sector comes with little oversight.

Our recently released Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia report details these and other costs that come with econocentric policies. They place the focus on the “bottom line” over immigrants’ well-being. They also undermine gender, class, and racial diversity in the immigration system. And they contribute to tensions over employment and wages in a tight labour market as seen with recent controversies over temporary foreign workers, especially when temporary migration has expanded so much that it now rivals permanent immigration.

The prevailing econocentric approach fails to grapple with the province’s complex economic, social, and cultural realities. Nova Scotia’s economy is vulnerable, the province is not ethnically diverse, and its “down home” culture insulates it from truly welcoming those from away.

To succeed on the immigration front, Nova Scotia needs to accept these realities and must incorporate other dimensions of life into its immigration policies. This will distinguish it from the pack. Nova Scotia has to think beyond the economic to consider what gives the province an advantage and where it has the most to offer. It needs to look at areas that the federal government and other provinces overlook. It has to think creatively and innovatively around immigration.

Creative policies recognize that investors and skilled immigrants are only a small slice of potential immigrants and they are the least likely to stay in communities with sluggish economies. They are policies that consider dipping into a deeper pool of immigrants and widening immigration streams.

These could include converting temporary migrants, workers and students, to permanent immigrants and should also involve attracting immigrants’ extended families to create immigration chains that would end in Nova Scotia.

Attracting extended family members opens up immigration pathways that are currently less available elsewhere, reduces the desire and need to return to immigrants’ home countries, and can provide important social supports for immigrants.

Innovative policies recognize the sacrifices immigrants make in coming to Nova Scotia. Many immigrants work below their skill levels here, which is a loss of human capital. Thinking creatively means redressing the gender imbalance in the existing immigration system, ensuring that more women are principal applicants. Creative policies are ones that invest in people and programs, for immigrants and current Nova Scotians.

Creative policies recognize the value of turning to alternate source countries for immigrants, ones not well represented in the present immigration system. In addition to attracting immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe, innovative policies would tap into other Atlantic countries, including Brazil, an emerging economic juggernaut, or the African countries which are now the fastest growing economies in the world. Beyond attracting a wider range of immigrants, this has the potential to enhance Nova Scotia’s place in the Atlantic region more broadly.

Creative policies do not ignore the economic. Instead, they add the currently overlooked social and cultural dimensions, generating a more balanced approach to immigration — one that will truly make for more winners and fewer losers, for the government, and for all the people of Nova Scotia.

Howard Ramos is an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University and Alexandra Dobrowolsky is a professor of political science at Saint Mary’s University. Both are research associates with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-NS.